Murder on Capitol Hill Read Online Free PDF

it.”
    “Poor Veronica,” Lydia said.
    “The doctor seemed to have things under control,” Clarence told her. “I’m sure she’s been sedated and is resting… she has her sons—”
    “God, Clarence, how much should a person be asked to take? First Jimmye, now this.”
    “Jimmye? Oh, yes… how long has it been, two years?”
    Jimmye McNab had been raised by the Caldwells since infancy, following the simultaneous death of her parents in an automobile crash. Jimmye’s mother and Veronica had been sisters, and the suddenly orphaned child had promptly been taken in by Veronica and Cale Caldwell to be raised as one of their own. She’d never been legally adopted, for reasons unknown to Lydia. What she did know was that approximately a year before Jimmye was found bludgeoned to death in a park in downtown Washington, she’d broken with her surrogate family and had seen little of them.
    At the time of her death, Jimmye was also one of Washington’s most visible and respected TV journalists. She’d uncovered and broken numerous important stories in the nation’s capital, and there had been talk of a network tapping her for a top anchor spot in which her natural journalistic ability and exciting good looks would be put to more solid commercial use.
    “I’m afraid,” Lydia said, “that I thought of Jimmye when I saw Cale on the floor. I remember talking to Cale and Veronica right after Jimmye died. They tried to be so strong, but you knew what theywere going through. Veronica’s too decent to have such a dreadful thing happen
twice
.”
    He’d brewed a pot of coffee. “We’ll all feel better after this. It’s two in the morning.”
    “Why?” Lydia asked of no one in particular. “Why would someone kill him?”
    “That’s the MPD’s problem,” Marvis said. “But anyone in the public eye makes enemies.”
    “You worked with him,” Lydia said. “Do you know of anyone who could hate him enough to
stab
him to death?”
    Marvis shrugged. “He had his enemies but no more than any other man in a leadership position. I suppose Senator MacLoon led the pack.” He lit a cigarette, crossed his legs. The smoke drifted in Lydia’s direction, making her want one, too. She’d stopped smoking ten years ago, and although the craving had long since disappeared, there were times like this when it came back with a wallop.
    “Being killed at a party certainly compounds the MPD’s job,” Clarence said. “How many guests were there, two hundred, maybe more? All at least theoretical suspects.”
    “Not
all
,” Boris said. “I did not even know the man.”
    “You’d met him, hadn’t you?” Lydia asked.
    “No. His wife, yes, when I gave a recital at her theater. Him, no. I am an apolitical man, I have no interest in politics or men who practice it. Art and politics are not compatible.”
    Foster-Sims noticed that Lydia had wrapped her arms about herself. “Are you cold?” he asked.
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll get you something.” He returned with a white cardigan sweater and draped it over her bare shoulders.
    “I think I’d better be heading home.”
    Marvis checked his watch. “Me too. If I thought working for Cale Caldwell was a busy job before, I can picture what this morning will be like.”
    Lydia looked at him. “I was surprised that you weren’t at his office, Dick. It must be alive with press—”
    “That’s Joe Borgen’s territory, he’s the press aide. I’m strictly a legislative type… sorry, but that’s Washington…”
    He stood, nodded to Lydia. “If there’s anything I can do, please call. I know you were a particular favorite of both the senator and his wife.”
    “Most upsetting,” Boris said after Marvis had left. “A party in a man’s honor terminates in his murder. If man listened more seriously to music perhaps he would not be so much the savage. I must be going.” Boris pulled a black tam from his jacket pocket and yanked it down over his large head, took black leather